Achilles6129
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OK, well let's start out with "God is timeless without creation." If no time exists at all, then obviously God is outside of time and therefore timeless.
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See that's not really an argument. That's a statement, that is apparently the conclusion of an argument. So the only thing I have to point out is that you have presented absolutely no evidence to support that claim. There might be good evidence, there might not be, but in your posts you have presented none except a link to a bunch of other arguments, some of which contradict each other.
If you want me to discuss this with you, you're going to have to put more effort into it.
Why do you believe that time came into existence rather than always existing? God didn't create intelligence or life either because those concepts have always been a part of him eternally. Perhaps time is a staple of existence just like those qualities of God.If no time exists at all, then obviously God is outside of time and therefore timeless.
I responded with this:All God has to do is act or move and time is created as a result.
And then I caught myself doing it again. Without the existence of time "until" is nonsense. The better way to phrase the question is thus: So then God does nothing in the absence of time?So then God did nothing until he created time?
It's no more controversial than claiming that our causal intuitions must continue to function in the absence of the very context in which they were derived and served a function. In fact, I would think that that would be more controversial a claim given that we have no experience of things "coming to be" ex nihilo or of supernatural entities causing anything to begin existing either ex nihilo or ex materia.First, the reason that temporal terms cannot legitimately be used in the context noted is because all parties involved in the discussion are intentionally talking about a possibility where time does not exist. I noted some concepts that implicitly rely on temporality and thus cannot be legitimately used in such a context (e.g. successive ordering, successive decisions).
You are proposing the idea that all causal activity also implicitly relies on temporality. Effectively you are claiming that all of our causal notions are limited to the realm of physics rather than metaphysics. Philosophers have traditionally distinguished between different kinds of causes, some of which operate only on the level of physics and some of which operate even on the level of metaphysics.
I am not going to get into an argument about the categorization of different causes, in part because it is highly complex and in part because it would take me some time to review the details. It should be noted, however, that your claim contextualizing causality within the temporal (and material) realm is not privileged with any clear burden of proof. Even the claim that we are not privy to extra-material causality depends on the controversial premise of materialism--a premise which cannot even make sense of causality within the material realm (a la David Hume). Claiming that human beings are fully subsumed within the temporal and material realms is a controversial move, to say the least.
But it does relate to the topic. You could cut god out of the picture entirely and still have a beginning to time.Honestly that's not the question of topic and I'd rather not get into it.
Because one cannot make sense of what is being proposed. But perhaps you could explain it better than Craig?Why?
Yes.Do you believe God is immutable? Immaterial? Eternal?
Stand? No. Very, very still? No. Accidentally? Definitely not. God simply existed without time. The question is what existence consists of for a timeless, immaterial, eternal, being. The very definition of timeless is for no events to occur. God had an unchanging desire to create.You are claiming that God had to stand very, very still lest he accidentally set off the entire time-space continuum!
A rock isn't alleged to creating time. Huge difference there. In a timeless state, God does not change and does not move. If He does, time exists alongside Him, and is therefore eternal and not created.Yet that's faulty from the get-go. A rock, even if it doesn't move or change at all, is still temporal. Being-at-rest as well as change implies temporality, given the proper substance.
Anything to support these claims?Strictly speaking, it is not the existence of change but rather the possibility of change that inaugurates the temporal realm. Time exists once a being that can change exists--it need not go through all the trouble of changing!
No one should deny anthropomorphisms. I am stating God is timeless. That eternalness gives way to timelessness. That is what Catholic doctrine states on the matter.I'm sorry, but your theology seems to be heavily riddled with anthropomorphisms. I hope it is clear to your interlocutors that you are not attempting to represent the tradition of Catholicism?
What is there for Him to do?So then God does nothing in the absence of time?
No, we cannot exclude God as he is the Creator. Creation cannot be without a Creator. Matter and energy did not create themselves.
As far as the stretch theory, that is pretty silly in that it is merely an attempt to avoid having a center of the Universe or a starting point. It makes less sense than a point where it began, and also contradicts observed space. As science it is a joke.
Science cannot explain what it does not know. If you leave God out you have even less to go on. Without God there is no explanation that makes any sense at all.
It's no more controversial than claiming that our causal intuitions must continue to function in the absence of the very context in which they were derived and served a function. In fact, I would think that that would be more controversial a claim given that we have no experience of things "coming to be" ex nihilo or of supernatural entities causing anything to begin existing either ex nihilo or ex materia.
So why include a god in the model at all?Yes. You could. And Im sure a lot of people do.
I don't think that technically counts. They didn't pop into existence from "nothing," did they?Things pop into existence from nothing all the time. It has even been observed by science.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/...foam-virtual-particles-and-other-curiosities/
I don't think that technically counts. They didn't pop into existence from "nothing," did they?
So you recognise that adding a god to the equation doesn't explain anything, but you're going to do it anyway?Again I did not intend to debate such in this thread. Honestly I am not interested.
Yes.
Stand? No. Very, very still? No. Accidentally? Definitely not. God simply existed without time. The question is what existence consists of for a timeless, immaterial, eternal, being. The very definition of timeless is for no events to occur. God had an unchanging desire to create.
The bottom line is that God existed without the universe and time.
A rock isn't alleged to creating time. Huge difference there. In a timeless state, God does not change and does not move. If He does, time exists alongside Him, and is therefore eternal and not created.
It is wholly unclear what you're suggesting. Is it, God is not timeless? God is timeless yet in some way that He can move? I think either is more faulty than my position....
Anything to support these claims?
No one should deny anthropomorphisms. I am stating God is timeless. That eternalness gives way to timelessness. That is what Catholic doctrine states on the matter.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger said:If anyone, following our train of thought, says, "Good, he can hear", must he not go on to ask, "But can he also answer our prayers?” Or is not the prayer of petition, the call of the creature up to God, in the last analysis a pious trick to elevate man psychologically and to comfort him, because he is seldom capable of higher forms of prayer? Surely the whole thing serves solely to set man in motion somehow or other toward transcendence, although in reality nothing can happen or be changed as a result of his prayers; for what is eternal is eternal, and what is temporal is temporal—no path seems to lead from one to the other. This, too, we cannot consider in detail here, because a very searching critical analysis of the concepts of time and eternity would be required. One would have to investigate their foundations in ancient thought and the synthesis of this thought with the biblical faith, a synthesis whose imperfection lies at the root of modern questioning. One would have to reflect once again on the relationship of scientific and technical thinking to the thinking of faith. These are tasks that go far beyond the scope of this book. So here again, instead of detailed answers, we must settle for an indication of the general direction in which the answer is to be sought.
Modern thinking usually lets itself be guided by the idea that eternity is imprisoned, so to speak, in its unchangeableness; God appears as the prisoner of his eternal plan conceived “before all ages”. “Being” and “becoming” do not mingle. Eternity is thus understood in a purely negative sense as timelessness, as the opposite to time, as something that cannot make its influence felt in time for the simple reason that it would thereby cease to be unchangeable and itself become temporal. Fundamentally these ideas remain the products of a pre-Christian mentality that takes no account of a concept of God that finds utterance in a belief in creation and incarnation. At bottom they take for granted the dualism of antiquity—something that we cannot go into here—and are signs of an intellectual naïveté that looks at God in human terms. For if one thinks that God cannot alter retrospectively what he planned “before” eternity, then unwittingly one is again conceiving eternity in terms of time, with its distinction between “before” and “after”.
But eternity is not the very ancient, which existed before time began, but the entirely other, which is related to every passing age as its today and is really contemporary with it; it is not itself barred off into a “before” and “after”; it is much rather the power of the present in all time. Eternity does not stand by the side of time, quite unrelated to it; it is the creatively supporting power of all time, which encompasses passing time in its own present and thus gives it the ability to be. It is not timelessness but dominion over time. As the Today that is contemporary with all ages, it can also make its influence felt in any age.
-Introduction to Christianity, p 315-7
That doesn't make any sense to me. If God creates something surely he can destroy it. It says many things will pass away in the Bible. Heaven and Earth will pass away. I don't understand your limitations on what God can do especially since it contradicts the Bible in many places.
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